Read The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman Free Online

Book Title: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first CenturyThe author of the book:Thomas L. FriedmanEdition: Macmillan AudioDate of issue: April 18th 2006Loaded: 2007 timesReader ratings: 7.7ISBN: 1427200165ISBN 13: 9781427200167Language: EnglishFormat files: PDFThe size of the: 999 KBCity - Country: No data

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"One mark of a great book is that it makes you see things in a new way, and Mr. Friedman certainly succeeds in that goal," the Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz wrote in The New York Times, reviewing The World is Flat in 2005. With his inimitable ability to translate complex foreign policy and economic issues, Friedman brilliantly demystifies the new flat world for listeners, making sense of the advances in technology and communications that challenge us to run even faster just to stay in place. For these updated and expanded editions, Friedman has added more hours of commentary, fresh stories and insights. New material includes:

• The reasons the flattening of the world "will be seen in time as one of those fundamental shifts or inflection points, like the invention of the printing press, the rise of the nation-state, or the Industrial Revolution"

• A mapping of the New Middle--the places and spaces in the flat world where middle-class jobs will be found--and portraits of the character types who will find success as New Middlers

• An account of the qualities American parents and teachers need to cultivate in young people so that they will be able to thrive in the flat world

• An account of the "globalization of the local": how the flattening of the world is actually strengthening local and regional identities rather than homogenizing the world

More than ever, The World Is Flat is an essential update on globalization, its successes and discontents, powerfully illuminated by one of our most respected journalists.

Read information about the author

Thomas L. Friedman is an internationally renowned author, reporter, and, columnist—the recipient of three Pulitzer Prizes and the author of six bestselling books, among them From Beirut to Jerusalem and The World Is Flat.

Thomas Loren Friedman was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on July 20, 1953, and grew up in the middle-class Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. He is the son of Harold and Margaret Friedman. He has two older sisters, Shelley and Jane.

In January 1995, Friedman took over the New York Times Foreign Affairs column. “It was the job I had always aspired to,” he recalled. “I had loved reading columns and op-ed articles ever since I was in high school, when I used to wait around for the afternoon paper, the Minneapolis Star, to be delivered. It carried Peter Lisagor. He was a favorite columnist of mine. I used to grab the paper from the front step and read it on the living room floor.”

Friedman has been the Times‘s Foreign Affairs columnist since 1995, traveling extensively in an effort to anchor his opinions in reporting on the ground. “I am a big believer in the saying ‘If you don’t go, you don’t know.’ I tried to do two things with the column when I took it over. First was to broaden the definition of foreign affairs and explore the impacts on international relations of finance, globalization, environmentalism, biodiversity, and technology, as well as covering conventional issues like conflict, traditional diplomacy, and arms control. Second, I tried to write in a way that would be accessible to the general reader and bring a broader audience into the foreign policy conversation—beyond the usual State Department policy wonks. It was somewhat controversial at the time. So, I eventually decided to write a book that would explain the framework through which I was looking at the world. It was a framework that basically said if you want to understand the world today, you have to see it as a constant tension between what was very old in shaping international relations (the passions of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, geography, and culture) and what was very new (technology, the Internet, and the globalization of markets and finance). If you try to see the world from just one of those angles, it won’t make sense. It is all about the intersection of the two.”

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